The matchup Sunday in Texas between the Los Angeles Chargers and Dallas Cowboys brings up a fascinating contrast that’s evolved among the respective team owners.
Not just fascinating, it’s surreal, like a vision conjured at a Grateful Dead concert.
In terms of football stewardship, Chargers top boss Dean Spanos now gets the nod over Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a three-time Super Bowl champion.
To be clear: Spanos, 75, hasn’t morphed into a sparkling entrepreneur and NFL power broker, a laJones, 83.
But, on the football side, Spanos has indeed improved, while Jones seems to have jogged in place for numerous years.
Crucially, Spanos had the good sense to make a franchise-changing move two years ago.
Breaking from a family tradition dating to the mid-1980s, Spanos hired a true head coach in Jim Harbuagh who’d won big in several stops and, unlike Marty Schottenheimer and Bobby Ross decades ago, commanded a large price in both salary and power.
Spanos agreed to pledge to Harbaugh top NFL dollar, and beef up the franchise’s skimpy infrastructure. Harbaugh was also given a big say in who became the team’s general manager: Joe Hortiz, a longtime scout with the smart Baltimore Ravens, who were coached by Harbaugh’s Super Bowl-winning brother, John.
For many years, Jones ran laps around the Dean Spanoses of the NFL. Brilliant at dealmaking, Jones helped to transform the Cowboys into the world’s most valuable sports team, valued this year at $13 billion by Forbes.
But as with many high achievers, Jones’ greatest strength can slip into weakness.
An ego that may have served him well, such as in 1994 when he audaciously fired head coach Tom Landy and replaced him with Jimmy Johnson, has arguably lowered the Cowboys’ ceiling in the annual Super Bowl race.
Jones stopped hiring alpha head coaches, with Bill Parcells a lone exception. Jason Garrett was Jones’ head coach for 10 years. Nuff said.
It’s been three decades since the Cowboys have appeared in the NFC championship game. The barren stretch began two years after Johnson was fired and the roster deteriorated under Barry Switzer and Jones.
Great head coaches may not want to work for Jones because he often creates a media circus. Throughout the NFL season, he gabs about pending moves involving Cowboys coaches, players and football strategy.
Coaches don’t like media circuses, but Jones can’t wean himself off the attention.
On the irony meter, Dean Spanos trumping Jerry Jones, via a splashy hire of a big-time head coach, pins the needle.
Jones, after all, made it possible for Spanos to move his team to a very big market: Greater Los Angeles and the $5.5-billion Kroenke Dome.
If it’s possible Spanos would’ve had the resources to hire a Harbaugh for the San Diego Chargers, it’s hard to dispute that his team’s relocation to L.A. and the Kroenke Dome made such a big investment and recruiting success more possible.
Jones was more bullish on L.A. than many other NFL team owners within the 22-year stretch beginning in 1995 in which the vast region lacked an NFL franchise.
L.A. was too big, too glamorous, too lucrative, the Cowboys’ owner insisted, to stay away. Related, a “wow” venue had to be built, Jones also insisted.
Other NFL team owners mounted strong counterpoints.
L.A. was conveniently empty, furthering the NFL’s efforts to extort huge stadium subsidies from other cities by threatening a move there.
Angelenos had grown accustomed to not having a local NFL team. Winning them over could be dicey. Nor was the NFL likely to wrangle stadium subsidies out of L.A. voters or their proxies.
Jones, from his own experience getting the Cowboys’ fancy, big-as-Texas stadium built, foresaw two other obstacles to his grand L.A. vision.
Private financing would be needed for a stadium. And great wealth would be essential, due to the inevitable cost overruns.
The outcome: Jones helped to effect the result he’d long championed.
The Rams returned to L.A., from St. Louis, after agreeing to build a stadiumin Inglewood financed mostly by team owner Stan Kroenke.
The cost overruns were indeed staggering, exceeding some $3 billion. They fell on Kroenke, a mega-billionaire.
Opened in 2020 during the pandemic, the Kroenke Dome feels like the Cowboys’ stadium. The site’s surrounding area feels like concrete maze, short on charm. There’s no there, there. Appropriately, the playing field is fake grass.
But, true to Jones’ vision, it’s as big and glitzy as L.A. – a 70,000-seat venue with a spaceship-sized scoreboard.
As Dean Spanos contemplated Los Angeles as a possible destination for the Chargers, he often sounded out Jones, an NFL power broker and an inveterate wheeler and dealer.
Jones would go to bat for Spanos and the Chargers.
Seeing that Kroenke lacked the votes from NFL owners needed to move the Rams to Inglewood as a single team, Jones played a big part in a compromise that got Kroenke the votes he needed and ultimately led to a juicy deal for the Chargers. They got first dibs over the Raiders as a tenant, and leveraged that into free tenancy and bearing none of the stadium’s cost overruns.
Kroenke wasn’t keen to share his stadium with the Chargers, but had benefited from Jones’ dealmaking.
Correctly seeing that Kroenke’s wealth and big-project savvy would be needed to get an L.A.-worthy stadium built, Jones had backed Kroenke’s L.A. bid over the proposal by Spanos and Raiders owner Mark Davis to build a stadium in Carson.
On top of benefiting Spanos and Kroenke, Jones set up rewards for himself. His sports-entertainment hospitality firm, Legends, has done a lot of work for the Chargers and Rams. About $1.2 billion in NFL transfers would be split among 30 NFL teams, via the two relocations to L.A.
Harbaugh is earning his big salary with L.A.
For the first time since 2006-07, the Chargers have won 10 games in consecutive seasons, rewarding the Spanoses for finally going both big and smart.
Jones, meantime, is overseeing another season that, while not devoid of exciting stretches, will end without a playoff berth. He can brag thatquarterback Dak Prescott’s fine season affirms Jones’ hire of rookie head coach Brian Schottenheimer, a former offensive assistant.
Also, his Cowboys (6-7-1) are 2 1/2-point favorites to beat the Chargers (10-4).
Regardless, while he’s visiting Texas, Spanos ought to dig into his wallet.
He should buy Jones his favorite Texas barbecue.